Time's Up For Masochism

It’s only 20 years since the three martini lunch was a common experience, and those were only the drinks before lunch. No one progressed through the eating stages of lunch without at least two different wines, sometimes twice that many, and then to the lucky dip of the liqueur trolley.

The symbol of this Age of Masochism, a symbol too often seen on restaurant tables, is lettuce. That tasteless, limp, uncookable, wimp of a vegetable, lettuce has a message for those who consume it: your conversation will become whiney, boring and serious.

People at work, instead of heading for the pub at lunchtime go swimming, running or, worse, to the gym. Is there companionship, gossip or fun to be found on a treadmill or a rowing machine? I don’t think so.

And it goes beyond lunch. Driving home the other night I felt depressed to see a jogger running in the rain with grim determination not to miss his daily dose of masochism etched into his face.

And there’s the modern misery of girls pressured to starve themselves into being thin, forced by fashion to bare their midriffs in the coldest weather, and shamed into buying ludicrously expensive handbags.

Time’s up for Masochism. It’s all gone far too far.